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Bakugou Katsuki has a talent for looking. Staring villains down, observing the mannerisms and behavioral patterns of strangers, keeping an eye on his friends and loved ones so they don't do anything stupid and get themselves hurt.
And Bakugou tends to look at Kirishima. A lot. Watching him go about his day-to-day for hours, his ever-shifting expressions as he smiles at every living soul he meets and then, gradually, quietly, when he thinks nobody is paying attention, lets it slip in the moments in-between.
It's not demanding, Bakugou's gaze. At first, Kirishima felt uncomfortable about it, this constant sensation of being watched. Then puzzled, when he figured out who is causing it. Kirishima isn't a particularly interesting person, so what is his best friend looking for, exactly?
It takes him a while to understand Bakugou just enjoys giving him his attention like that. There's nothing to change about himself when those calm, red eyes fall on him, nothing Bakugou is silently waiting for him to do.
Kirishima simply exists and Bakugou simply looks at him, sometimes.
Sometimes, Kirishima will stare back before eventually breaking into a smile and falling back on words to carry on with their conversation. Sometimes, Kirishima continues his routine, comforted by the notion Bakugou is watching out for him today.
Other times, quite rarely in fact, Bakugou does have something to say. Pointing out the phone Kirishima's been searching for as he mumbles to himself and frantically pulls up the cushions of the common room couches, or reminding him of the spar with Tetsutetsu he's lowkey late to already.
(Then, there are the times this habit is questioned. Their classmates muttering about how intense being targeted by that stare is, asking Kirishima how he can stand it. A cross of admiration and genuine fascination more than anything else, and he can only raise short, red brows in surprise and shrug. In what world would Bakugou's own form of socializing ever be a bother to him?)
Years pass. They finish school, get their licenses, become the Heroes they've always dreamed of being — and Bakugou's attention remains on Kirishima. Drifting away when duty calls, but always returning at the end of long days and even longer battles.
They've been engaged for a little over a year when everything changes.
When Kirishima receives a solo mission that requires his specific quirk and the highest possible security clearance to even know about. Security clearance Dynamight does not have, his spot in Japan's Top 3 be damned. The transmission self-destructs after Kirishima has listened to it twice, tears brimming in his eyes. Too many lives hang in the balance, Bakugou's life too, and if there's one man Kirishima would do everything for, it's him.
Everything.
The evening before he leaves, he can't meet Bakugou's gaze. Kirishima can't say anything, can't risk him finding out, and his heart crumbles a little more when Bakugou asks him, softly, if something happened. When he has to deny what Bakugou never had to explicitly request before. When he whispers he's going to bed, becomes aware that this will break Bakugou's heart clean in two.
By midnight, he's gone without a trace.
*
And again, the years come and go.
Bakugou gets used to waking up to an empty bed, an empty apartment, an empty feeling in his chest. He keeps his eyes down, tired of searching the crowds for a burst of red he's starting to accept might never return. Because Bakugou is a Hero, and he knows Kirishima better than he knows himself, most days.
Knows how deep their bond runs, and that there must've been a damn good reason for Kirishima to disappear like that.
Most days. The others, he doesn't — can't — dwell on.
It's a ludicrous idea. Japan's branch of the Museum of Modern Art puts out a request to all local Heroes for a performance piece they're planning, a space where citizens and the ones sworn to protect them can meet one on one, face to face. Bakugou is off his feet anyway, recovering from a stupid mistake that left his right side wide open, the side Kirishima used to take extra care to shield for him, and the flyer merely mentions sitting there. Staring.
Letting people come to their own realization that Heroes are human too, or whatever.
Nobody mentions it to Bakugou. Everyone who is aware of that old habit of his knows it had been laser-focused on one person since first year, and now that person is gone, perhaps indefinitely. Bakugou finds out anyway. He can't help it: He laughs and laughs, imagining the delighted gasp Kirishima would make at the prospect of poor Musutafu residents voluntarily facing the brunt of Bakugou's freakish talent to look even if just for a handful of minutes at a time.
Kirishima only ever got the nice version. The soft gazes, the quiet reassurance. Bakugou isn't soft and quiet with anyone these days, another such universally known fact, and some morbidly curious part of himself wants to know if anyone else will ever withstand it.
The simple answer to that is, 'No.'
That's the thing about art, though: Even a concept as straight-forward as sit in front of the Hero, meet their gaze for three minutes and leave isn't simple, Bakugou learns that on day fucking one. Arms crossed, firmly planted on a too-stiff wooden chair, he witnesses people struggling to maintain eye contact. Listens to them laugh uncomfortably and try to strike up conversation, giving up the instant they realize he won't answer. Watches them stare at him in unabashed awe when it sinks in that, among all available Heroes, it's the one and only Dynamight making himself accessible like this, out of his own free will no less.
Some cry.
Some thank him for saving them weeks, months, years ago, while others come to verbally — in one case physically — spit in his face.
Some don't care, stopping by on a whim to see what the fuss is about and deeming the experience overall pointless.
Some come by multiple times and tell him stories. By the second week, Bakugou finds himself recognizing them, keeping track of those glimpses into the life of strangers and wondering how they're doing mostly to occupy his mind somehow.
No encounter is like the other, every single one entirely unique.
Begrudgingly, Bakugou has to admit the curators might be onto something there. But it also tugs at him, the collective weight of these fragments of pure, human experience. Wears him out, reminds him of things he doesn't want to think about.
Of a kind, sharp-toothed smile and red eyes always willing to meet his own. Of the ache he's buried deep within.
They used to play this game, back in high school: Two people stare at each other, entirely silent, and whoever breaks composure first loses. Bakugou and Kirishima were masters at this game, unsurprisingly — they could last an hour if left undisturbed, though Bakugou always won in the end, his smile slower to dawn than Kirishima's. Bakugou thinks of that game often. Even now, he wins every round, none of the museum's visitors quite prepared to stare into his eyes and not react in some way eventually, positive or negative.
Until, towards the end of a shift in which Bakugou's mind has drifted to what will come after this strange experiment of his, a man sits across from him.
Slightly too tall for the seat provided by the gallery, with big, scarred hands coming to rest on his own knees. Fidgeting. Bakugou rights himself with a private sigh to himself, arms crossed in a marginally different way to ease the strain on his right shoulder before he settles into his stare for the next three minutes. Only a few more, then he'll go home and—
Scars that are intimately familiar to him.
Blowing wide, Bakugou's eyes snap upwards. Red meets red, so many shades of it: Red pupils, so soft and sad; strands of faded red that Bakugou automatically craves to run his fingers through, a reminder to re-dye them soon on his tongue; lips, bitten raw from too-sharp teeth. There Kirishima is, a few years older, changed in a thousand little ways that shatter Bakugou's heart all over again because he wasn't able to see any of it happen, but—
His gaze is the same, exactly the same. Unafraid to look back, to give Bakugou so much without a single word spoken, all the love he has held onto for his best friend and partner reflected in equal measure.
And Bakugou feels it well up in him, this indescribable wave of emotion that he's only ever observed in other people, stuck on the outside and unable to fully connect. His bottom lip trembles, his vision helplessly blurring.
For the first time, it's Bakugou who breaks, barely a minute into it. Rasping out, "Eijirou", the only sound in the exhibit that is usually filled with chatter and excitement yet fell pin-drop silent when Red Riot, a Hero believed to have died long ago, stepped into the performance.
"Hey, Katsuki", comes the soft-spoken answer, Kirishima's eyes swimming with tears.
A shaky exhale, then he leans forward, offers his hands palm-up across the empty space between the chairs. Bakugou doesn't even think about his ninety day streak of stubborn non-compliance, about the nebulous point he was trying to prove to himself by returning here week after week.
None of it matters when his vision is once again filled with Kirishima, down to their hands steadily intertwining.